August 30, 2019, Dallas, TX – Softweb Solutions, an Avnet company, concluded the five-day hackathon event held across the company’s three offices in Dallas, Chicago and Ahmedabad.

The multi-shore event kicked off on Monday, 19 August 2019 and finished on Friday, 23 August 2019 where 150+ participants worked on innovative ideas based on IoT and AI technologies, leveraging Avnet’s IoTConnect platform. It took the efforts of 50+ people to plan and execute the event.

Sixteen teams developed their proof-of-concept projects which were presented to the Softweb panel. The demo included a working model of the project along with a business presentation, technical documentation as well as marketing material.

Ripal Vyas, President of Softweb Solutions said, “This was by far the biggest hackathon event held at Softweb. The five-day format served as the perfect stage for our participants to develop their ideas from initiation to execution. The teams consisted of personnel from all the departments which allowed them to get an in depth look at development, marketing and project management. I am really happy with all the teams, the innovative ideas that they set out to address and what they eventually delivered.”

There were a host of awards for all the teams which included trophies and cash prizes. Some of the awards included favorite team based on their social media activities and teams with the best marketing pitch, technical documentation as well as a jury’s choice award.

The winning solution, Smart Greenhouse, provides IoT-enablement to greenhouses and offers microclimate control and energy optimization. It also helps growers to enhance soil fertility, get better yields and predict harvest time.

The first runner-up, Planthack, is an AI-based smart agriculture solution, which uses image recognition to identify the type of disease, symptoms, cause and treatment for plants. It enables farmers to control plant diseases, follow best agricultural practices and ensure better crop health.

The second runner-up created a solution that monitors the levels of concentration of various harmful gases such as carbon monoxide, methane and volatile organic compounds to minimize the hazardous incidents that occur in industries.